Raptiva is a man-made antibody. It goes against T cells, the quarterbacks of the immune system. It doesn't kill the T cells -- instead, it blocks T cells from moving from the blood into the skin.
Mark Lebwohl, MD, of Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York, and colleagues treated nearly 600 moderate-to-severe psoriasis patients with two different doses of Raptiva. After 12 weeks of treatment:
28% of high-dose patients (2 mg/kg body weight injections once a week) had at least 75% improvement.
22% of low-dose patients (2 mg/kg body weight injections every other week) had at least 75% improvement.
"Continued [Raptiva] therapy provided continued benefit," Lebwohl and colleagues report. "In addition, extending the [Raptiva] treatment from 12 to 24 weeks resulted in improved responses in many subjects who did not initially have improvement of 75% or more."
